Boca Raton is moving three historically notable homes from their location at 498 Crawford Blvd. The buildings are (l-r) Singing Pines, the Ricketts House and the Rickards House. Staff photo
By Mary Hladky
The historic Singing Pines Children’s Museum building soon will be moving to a new location.
The home, the second oldest in Boca Raton that still exists, will be relocated to Meadows Park in September.
Two other historically notable homes will be moved at that same time. The Rickards house also is going to Meadows Park, at 1300 NW Eighth St. The Ricketts house will go to the Boca Raton Cemetery and Mausoleum at 451 SW Fourth Ave.
The project will cost the city $4.2 million.
All three have been at 498 Crawford Blvd., on the city’s downtown government campus, for years. The city originally decided to move them to make way for a new building administration and code enforcement building.
Since then, the city has entered into a public-private partnership with Terra and Frisbie Group to redevelop the 30-acre downtown campus. Plans for the new city building now are on hold and the city will be moving some existing recreation facilities off-site to free up space for its new downtown campus vision.
The relocation of the now-closed children’s museum was controversial, with the city’s Historic Preservation Board saying the city should not “shove it in a park that nobody uses.”
The City Council overruled the board, after city staff said that when the city designated the building as historic in 1988, it was not because of its location. The current site is not the original one.
The museum building was built in 1913 or 1914 at 301 SE First Ave. by William Myrick on property purchased from Henry Flagler’s Model Land Co.
The museum opened in 1979 but closed in 2019 as operational costs increased. The COVID-19 pandemic stalled efforts to reopen it.
The Rickards house, built in the 1890s by the city’s first settler, Thomas Moore Rickards, looks like the original that was once located on Palmetto Park Road. But it was completely rebuilt and so has less historical importance.
The Ricketts house was built in 1940 and became the real estate office for developer Arvida Corp., founded by Arthur Vining Davis. It is planned to be placed on the southeast portion of the cemetery property along Southwest Third Avenue.
If no problems crop up, the relocation project, including landscaping, will be completed in January.
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